The Western
Colonies

Greek literary
tradition recounts many tales of the returns of the heroic
generation that fought at Troybut few of the plunderers of Priams
citadel reached home safely, and those who did kept their thrones for
only a little while; most were condemned to years of wandering in the
far reaches of the known world until finally, in despair of ever again
seeing their homes, they settled on distant shores from one end of the
Mediterranean to the other. It was as if the return home was blockednot
just by stormy seas, but by upheavals and dislocations that deprived the
returnees of shelter in their own land. Following the disasters that afflicted
the Greek lands, the last of the heroic generation turned into wanderers
and pirates, seeking for living space far from their own ravaged habitations.(1)
Strabo, the Roman geographer, thus described the situation that ensued
in the wake of Troys fall:

For it came about
that, on account of the length of the campaign, the Greeks of that time,
and the barbarians as well, lost both what they had at home and what
they had acquired by the campaign; and so, after the destruction of
Troy, not only did the victors turn to piracy because of their poverty,
but still more the vanquished who survived the war. And indeed, it is
said that a great many cities were founded by them along the whole seacoast
outside of Greece, and in some parts of the interior also.(2)

Excavations
in Sicily over the past one hundred years have revealed evidence of extensive
contact with Greece in the Mycenaean Age. As to the people with whom the
Mycenaeans traded, their remains attest to a prosperous culture, beginning
in the Early Bronze Age and lasting for many centuries; but then, after
the latest style of imported Mycenaean ware had run its course,(3)
no new pottery, actually no sign of any human presence, appears until
the late eighth century. Scholars conclude that Sicilian civilization
of the Late Bronze Age came to an abrupt end about the end of the
thirteenth century B.C. (4) Were the
same causes which brought to a close the age of Mycenaean greatness also
active on the far-removed island of Sicily? Archaeologists can only speculate
about causes; but on one point their verdict is clearA real
Dark Age set in only to be brought to an end five centuries later with
the Greek colonization of Sicily and Southern Italy. (5)
Regarding the new Greek settlements, archaeology and tradition agree that
the first ones were established near the end of the eighth century and
the beginning of the seventh. The founding of colonies in the western
Mediterranean was one of the earliest achievements of the historical Greeks
as they emerged out of the ruins of the Mycenaean Age. Syracuse, on the
eastern coast of Sicily, was founded, according to the almost universally
accepted tradition, ca. 735 B.C.;(6)
Thucydides wrote that Gela was built in the forty-fifth year after
Syracuse by Antiphemus, that brought a colony out of Rhodes. (7)
This yields a date of ca. -690 for the founding of Gela on the islands
southern shore.(8) A tradition
preserved by Eusebius has Gela founded in the same year as the city of
Phaselis in Asia Minor. Eusebius date for both cities is -690, closely
matching that of Thucydides.(9)
These traditions were set forth in greater detail by a Greek historian
whose works are no longer extant except for fragments preserved by other
ancient writers. In one surviving fragment from his book On the Cities
of Asia(10) Philostephanos
wrote that Antiphemos, the founder of Sicilian Gela, was a brother of
Lacius who founded Phaselis in Asia Minor, both brothers hailing from
Rhodesthey had been in the company of Mopsus as he made his way
into Cilicia in the years following the Trojan War. In the chronology
of Philostephanos, then, Gela was founded in the same generation that
saw the fall of Troy, by one of the warriors who took part in that war;
and since, as we have seen, the historical date of Gelas establishment
is acknowledged by the best authorities to be ca. 690 B.C., Priams
city could not have fallen more than two or three decades earlier.(11)

If the Sicilian
Late Bronze Age, contemporary with the Mycenaean Age in Greece, ended
abruptly about the time of the Trojan War, the stratigraphic sequence
yields no evidence about the dark centuries supposedly separating it from
the Geometric Age. After only a few decades the Geometric Age was interrupted
by the arrival of Greek colonists, bringing their own distinctive culture
from Corinth and Rhodes and other places in Greece. Despite the marked
changes in the archaeological finds after the cessation of imported Mycenaean
ware, many of the old Mycenaean influences continued to flourish both
in the native settlements of the late eighth and early seventh centuries
and in the Greek coloniesthe examples are very numerous.

The strength
of Mycenaean influence in Sicily [in Late Geometric times]
is attested by a tholos tomb at Sant-Angleo Muxaro, north of Agrigento
[an ancient port on Sicilys southern coast]; but it can scarcly
be appreciated without knowledge of the Mycenaean royal tombs. (12)
The large and unusual tholos tombs (13)
at Muxaro are, in fact, real tholoi, comparable with the Mycenaean
ones (14) even though they are dated
much later than Mycenaean times (15)this
because of the Geometric pottery found inside. How the Sicilians were
able to imitate the dome-shaped tholos tombs half a millennium after such
constructions ceased to be made in Greece, and despite being cut
off from contact with the Aegean during the same period (16)
is a puzzling question, especially if we consider that scholars deny that
any such tombs were built in Sicily in the five preceding centuries, though
they were common in the Late Bronze Age.(17)
But let us enter some of the tombs and examine the objects found inside.
Little pots with geometric and orientalizing designs indicated a period
not earlier than the beginning of the seventh century.(18)
Among them the excavators discovered two splendid gold rings with
animal figures incised in their settings. (19)
One of these shows a cow suckling a calf, the other a strange feline
animal, or perhaps a wolf, (20) depicted
in a way clearly descended from remote Mycenaean traditions.
(21) Not only the rings, but gold bowls
found in the same tomb derive from Mycenaean gold-work. (22)
Perhaps here again we have a far-distant echo of the Mycenaean world.
(23)

The same puzzling
survivals from Mycenaean times appear also at another Sicilian siteat
Segesta, in the western part of the island. The founding of Segesta was
dated by tradition to the years following the Trojan War, and was ascribed
to a Trojan named Aegestes.(24)
The eighth and seventh-century Geometric pottery from Segesta displays
startling Mycenaean influences. A good example is the schematized
drawing of a bull, moving from the left to the right, with horns butting
against an unidentified object. This motif was a common one on Mycenaean
and, more generally, Aegean pottery. Other motifs of Mycenaean derivation
include stylized floral patterns and tassels with meandering lines; these
motifs are not paralleled in Geometric pottery. (25)
The examples are many; and they are all the more remarkable since the
last Mycenaean pottery on the island is said to have gone out of use some
four or five hundred years earlier. These observations caused much amazement
among art historians, but brought no viable suggestion as to how the motifs
could have been transmitted through the Dark Age to influence the Geometric
ware of Segesta half a millennium later. Could the Phoenicians perhaps
have preserved the Mycenaean tradition and, on establishing themselves
on the island, have imparted them to the native people of Sicily?, wondered
one scholar; but he rejected the thought, for the earliest Phoenician
settlement in Sicily dates from the seventh century, and what was found
there of course is not Mycenaean. (26)

Wherever the
archaeologists turned they found a blank in the archaeological sequence
where five centuries should have left at least a trace. At Gela there
is a gap... between the Bronze Age sites, belonging at the outside to
the middle of the second millennium, and the objects from the first Greek
occupation in the seventh century B.C. And the explanation? This
is one confirmation that the native peoples left the coastal regions at
the close of the age when, at the dawn of the Greek world, the Mycenaeans
and other seafarers who came in their wake brought piracy, violence and
looting along with trade. (27) At
Thapsos, in the vicinity of Syracuse, Mycenaean imports... cease
towards the end of Mycenaean IIIB, and this implies that the coastal villages
were abandoned by about 1270 B.C... In the late VIII century Thapsos was
occupied again for a short time by Greek colonists... (28)
If the coast was abandoned during the Dark Age, did life continue in the
interior? At Morgantina in central Sicily, below the earliest defences
put up by the colonists... late Mycenaean XIII century ware and Ausonian
pottery of the XII century [was followed] by VII century pottery of SantAngelo
Muxaro type. (29) Between the levels,
nothing at all was found.

The responsibility
for creating the Dark Age of Sicily lies with the erroneous Egyptian timetable.
Some of the Mycenaean ware found on the island is exactly the same
pottery as that found in Egypt in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna, the capital
of Amenophis [Akhnaton](30)
All the indications from Sicilian sites showing direct succession of the
Late Bronze Age and Greek colonial periods counted for nothing when the
an absolute time scale, introduced from Egypt, demanded the insertion
of five empty centuries. As one scholar admitted in another context, the
Aegean prehistorians have no choice but to adapt themselves to the Egyptologists.
(31)

References

Cf. above, section A Gap Closed.

Strabo, Geography

The latest style was
Late Helladic III B with a small number of exemplars of Late Helladic
III C. See W. Taylour, Mycenaean Pottery in Italy and Adjacent
Areas (Cambridge, 1958) p. 74; H.-G. Buchholz, Agäische
Funde und Kultureinflüsse in der Randgebieten des Mittelmeers,
Archäologischer Anzieger 89 (1974) pp. 343, 345, 346,
349-350. Thapsos, near Syracuse and Agrigento, are the two main find
spots.

This tradition is given
in the version of Eusebius Chronicle preserved by Jerome,
Dionysius and Barhebraeus; cf. Miller, The Sicilian Colony Dates,
pp. 14, 187.

In Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae
VII. 298.

A Cretan named Entimus
is said to have assisted Antiphemus in the founding of the city; and
traces of Minoan influence at Gela have been noted by E. Langlotz
(Ancient Greek Sculpture of South Italy and Sicily [New York,
1965], transl. by A. Hicks, p. 15) and by many others.

Langlotz, Ancient
Greek Sculpture, p. 15.

Guido, Sicily,
p. 102.

Brea, Sicily Before
the Greeks, p. 174.

Guido, Sicily,
p. 102; the author dates them probably from the VIII to the
middle of the V pre-Christian centuries. (p. 129).

T. J. Dunbabin, Minos
and Daidalos in Sicily, Papers of the British School at Rome,
Vol. XVI (New series, vol. III [1948]) p. 9: The complete absence
of Protogeometric, and of Geometric older than the second half of
the eighth century, makes it clear that the Minoan-Mycenaean contacts
were quite broken.